now would be a good time to start praying
by ManofManyHats
Summary: There's no better place to convert than in a dingy alleyway as you breathe your last breaths. Or, Mako thinks he's dying. He doesn't know what that means. Or, The author was having an existential crisis, and is hardcore projecting.


_AN: I've been contemplating death (as we all do) and then I contemplated the Avatar World (because all roads lead to Avatar), and I wondered, huh, we never really got a clear cut answer on what people thought happened after death in that world. So I wanted to explore. By having someone almost die in a dark alleyway, and that someone was Mako because he'd honestly be the likeliest to die in an alley and because I like to torture the characters I like. _

_The other reason I wrote this was because FFN has a Spiritual genre and I wondered "what the hell kinda story could fit in there"? And then somehow I wrote what is potentially the best thing I've ever written, at least on a technical basis. It took a year and it's for a character only about 3 people care about, but I'm pretty fucking proud of it. Anyway, enjoy. Drop a comment. Tell me about your existential dread. Yell into the void. I'll yell back._

* * *

Bleeding out in a dark alleyway that smelled of rotting fish was… a way to go, he guessed. He'd really rather not, y'know, die at all tonight, but it had to happen eventually and this honestly wasn't as bad as he'd expected it to be.

How'd he get here again? Right, the triads. He'd been on his way home after another long night at the station, running on too much caffeine and not enough sleep, which probably made driving his moped back not the greatest idea in the first place. Then the lion-turtle face of a triad satomobile started tailing him and he really wished he'd just called a cab.

Mako sighed, best he could with his bruised… everything. Being flung off his bike and crashing into the asphalt had not been great.

He hadn't moved much since then, couldn't even if he wanted to. He'd just crawled into the aforementioned alleyway, flumped back against the concrete and let his injuries take their turn pummeling him into the ground. He'd fallen hard on his hip in the initial crash and something there had broken or slipped or shattered. A concussion. Definitely a concussion. Mako's pretty sure he's not meant to feel the weight of his brain against his skull. Blood was trickling from his forehead and from a smaller cut on his jaw, where the waterbender's ice had smashed into him. When he'd made impact with the ground, his chest felt like it'd compressed into itself, ribs curling inwards and pressing his organs against his lungs. His breaths felt wet.

Red Monsoons, probably. Must've caught wind of the raids he'd been working on against them and decided to end it here. It was a pretty clean hit, he'd give them that. The ice the waterbender used to freeze his front wheel and flip him into the sidewalk would melt before daybreak. When Mako crawled into the alleyway, the cab made a second pass through to finish him off, pelting him with a hail of ice. That too would melt by morning, and the injuries they'd made looked just like any you'd get in a vehicle crash.

Someone would probably find him the next day and say how poor, idiot Mako had fallen asleep at the wheel and died. What an anti-climatic end. Somehow, that annoyed him as much as dying.

A breath rattled up his throat. That's what this was, wasn't it? Dying. His life was ticking away by the second, trickling down in red lines across his chin and being crushed out of his lungs. His senses were fading. Nobody was coming.

He was dying. So… what next?

A shudder ran down his body. The question had never been so in-his-face before. There had been life-or-death situations before, sure — those bad nights on the streets, a few scuffles with the triads, Amon, Harmonic Convergence, the Red Lotus, he could go on — but in all those times, he'd always been focused on surviving. Sparing a thought on what came after death would've been like admitting defeat. You only took the time to worry about things if you thought they would happen.

Now, he was definitely worrying. What did dying even mean? The only image that came to mind was a flat, yawning, darkness. He had no afterlife or deity to hope for. He didn't even have a prayer to say at a time like this.

If he closed his eyes and never opened them again — if he _died —_ what would happen?

His body would seize up and lose color, become a lifeless corpse that some poor civilian would come across in the morning. They'd call the station, one of his coworkers would be brought in and have the sorry job of realizing 'holy shit, that's Mako right there'. They'd cordon off the area, trace his outline in chalk, take in the sight of his crashed moped and mentally pencil off his cause of death as a traffic collision. Maybe someone would suspect foul play, maybe they wouldn't. It didn't really matter.

In this theoretical timeline, Chief Beifong would be the next to know. She'd be the one to ring up everyone else. Shame, he really shouldn't be giving her more work to do, spirits know she didn't need it. He'd seen her after they'd lost officers and knew she took those hits to heart — a little stubborn part of him wondered if his death would be just a little heavier to bear than the others-

Wait, no. That was stupid thinking. Now was definitely not the time to be wondering if he was one of the chief's favorites. The blood loss must be getting to him.

Anyway, Beifong would have the job of calling his next of kin. Bolin never woke up that early. He'd pick up the phone half asleep, not fully hear what the chief had to say the first time, think he was dreaming when she repeated it a second time, and finally come to when she shouted at him a third. Mako's heart fell somewhere into his stomach at the thought of how he'd take the news.

Asami would be in her office, take the call from her desk and handle it with grace. She'd mourn in private — after the Battle of the Colossus, she had practice in that — though truth be told she had every right to simply say good riddance. Their history was rocky, to say the least. Past Mako was quite an asshole and current Mako wasn't anything to write home about either, but Asami stuck around. Why, he wasn't sure — he wasn't really sure why anyone stuck with him at all, if he was being honest, but he was a better person because of it.

Which brought him to Korra. Someone would find a radio to her — spirits know where she was these days, probably brokering world peace somewhere in the Earth Kingdom — and if he knew her as well as he hoped, she'd be angry. Looking for someone to blame and a head to bust open. Probably want to pull him out of his grave and sock him in the jaw for being stupid enough to let himself die. He probably deserved it.

After those three, someone would reach out to the rest of his family, who he'd only gotten to know for a pitifully short amount of time. His grandmother would learn that she'd outlived her grandson. His dad's branch of the family tree would shrivel up a little more.

Word would trickle out to anyone else who might've cared. Tenzin, his family, the other airbenders — he'd stayed with them for a time and they knew him enough to mourn. It'd reach Zaofu — between Lin being his boss and Opal dating Bolin, he'd become inexplicably tied with the Beifong clan. Maybe even Wu would catch wind.

There'd be a funeral, there'd be mourning. At least he hoped so. Kinda a morbid thing to hope for but he'd like to think there were at least a few people who'd miss him. If he'd died just a few years back, Bolin would probably be the only one at his funeral but now, well, he could hope for a small service. Family, some friends, maybe a nice send off from the police force.

Then, they'd move on. Of course they'd move on, they had to move on — it was only his life that ended, not theirs. There'd be good days and bad days, summers and winters, nights and days — without him. There'd be fights and battles he should've been in. People he hadn't met yet. There'd be parties and festivals and weddings — Korra and Asami, Bolin and Opal, Jinora and Kai — which he wouldn't get to attend. Maybe his brother and Opal would have a child one day, a little green eyed kid who'd never know their grumpy, firebending uncle, and just how very, very much he'd wanted to meet them.

Oh spirits. He didn't want to die.

Whatever instinct of self-preservation he had left sprung into action. It pumped adrenaline into his veins. It tensed his muscles for fight or flight. It screamed at him to get up, run, shout — live _goddamn it_. But none of his limbs listened. His mind was like a trapped weasel-snake throwing itself against its cage — it thrashed and begged until it bruised and bled, but the metal wouldn't budge.

Nothing. His heart rate was going a mile a minute and he didn't moved an inch.

A measly tear dropped from his eye. Just one, and then he swallowed down the rest. This was pathetic enough. His corpse shouldn't have teartracks when they found it. There was no running from this, no fighting it, no rationalizing it. He couldn't move. Nobody was coming.

He was dying. And if he was dying he should at least be making progress. What were those stages of grief again? Denial… something, something, acceptance. Mako was a little pressed on time, so he might as well skip to the end.

He was dying. Stop crying and figure out what that meant.

Dying was… well, he didn't know. People believed in a lot of things and Mako's plan had always been to die quickly so he wouldn't have time to contemplate which of those things he believed in. Obviously, the world laughed in his face, so here he was.

A lot of people believed in reincarnation. Since the Avatar reincarnated into a new body after they died, the same should happen to everyone else, right? It made sense. There just wasn't any real proof. No one could reach out to their past lives like the Avatar did, nobody ever knew who they were in a past life or could guess who they'd be in the next life. And after learning from Korra that the Avatar was part spirit, who's to say that regular humans followed the same rules?

He wasn't the biggest fan of the idea, and not just for lack of evidence. The thing that rubbed him the wrong way was if you died and came back to life in a different body, with a different mind and no recollection of your past life, was that new you really _you? _He didn't mind reincarnation as much as he loathed the idea of his old life just burning up and disappearing. It couldn't be that simple, right? All the good things and bad things anyone had ever done — gone, just like that. Where was the justice?

Justice. He must really be a cop at heart if he was hoping for courts in death.

And that's assuming people even reincarnated as human. The Avatar, by all accounts, was a special case. With his luck, he'd probably come back as a fire ferret destined to be pythonaconda food. Or a plant. Well, a plant wouldn't be that bad. Rooting down in some crack in the pavement and soaking up sun for all his semi-conscious life — it didn't sound that bad. And no pain receptors. That'd be great right about now.

He remembered a conversation he'd had with Tenzin while staying on the island after Amon's takeover years ago. Bolin out of nowhere sprung the 'What happens when we die?' question over breakfast. Thankfully, he waited until the kids and most of the room cleared out before asking. Bolin asked Mako himself the same thing a few days prior — losing their home to Amon might've given him a mild existential crisis — and his answer was something along the lines of _I don't know, who cares, _and _when I die I'll let you know. _Past Mako's empathy wasn't exactly something he was proud of.

"Well, no one truly knows," Tenzin had said. "The Air Nomads believed in rebirth. When we die, we're born into a different body. All we take with us is our karma, and in our new life, the world will try to balance itself, repaying us for our good deeds and punishing us for the bad."

"And you believe that?" Bolin asked.

"I do."

Mako remembered thinking what horrible things he must've done in a past life to end up orphaned on the street and living through Amon's revolution. Again, Past Mako was a bitter little thing.

"The airbenders believed in rebirth, but that wasn't the end goal. They believed that one could break free from the cycle of rebirth if they dedicated their life to meditation and letting go of worldly desires. If they succeeded, they'd break free, and become air — one with the wind, and with the world."

A breeze was passing through the alleyway, piercingly cold, numbing away feeling from his extremities — fingers, toes, the tips of his ears. Mako probably wouldn't be turning into wind this time around. He'd never felt heavier in his life.

The airbenders wanted to be one with the air — made sense. The other nations were the same. Those in the Earth Kingdom were commonly buried, so they could return to the earth they came from. The Water Tribes had a tradition of laying their dead in canoes and setting them asail for one last trip. And of course, the Fire Nation went with cremation, letting the fire take back the life it gave.

All of those came with their own stories and beliefs, not that he knew any in detail. Just snippets of prayers he'd heard in the middle of the night, words he'd skimmed from some holy texts he'd found while loitering in bookstores, and some especially descriptive curses spat out by the odd triad member.

The Northern Lights were trails of the dead making their way to the Spirit World. Earthquakes were vengeful earthbenders turning in their graves. The stars were the souls of great firebenders that kept burning even after death.

Wind, star, whatever else people believed in, Mako doubted he would ascend to it. He'd never been one to meditate, or pray, or contemplate his place in the world, and his _greatness _was questionable at best.

You'd think the afterlife wouldn't be so shrouded in mystery in this day and age. Humans literally walked with spirits everyday — there were probably a few of them buzzing with the moths around the streetlamp above him. You could practically take a cab to the Spirit World at this point. The spirits were everywhere — why couldn't they help figure out what this dying thing meant?

The spirits were powerful beings. They made the moon rise and the seasons change. They gifted humans the elements and taught them how to use them. People built temples to them in hopes that they would give them wealth and prosperity, and prayed to them for peace and guidance. But that's the thing, wasn't it? The spirits helped you live, not die. They could tell you stories from 10,000 years ago, they could teach you about the world and your place in it, they could show you peace and patience and love, but ask them what dying was and they wouldn't have an answer.

What could they say? Even the spirit of Raava herself, who, in a way, had died hundreds of deaths, only knew so much — death to her just meant rebirth. The same might not be true for a mere mortal. Like y'know, himself.

As great as the spirits might be, they weren't on a different tier of existence from humans. Trust him, after the last few years of spirits making themselves at home in Republic City, he'd gotten to realize that spirit-kind could be as much of a bumbling train wreck as humankind. Sure, there were the kinds like Koh and Raava, but there were also others like that one aye-aye spirit who he almost had to charge for reckless driving and those two frog spirits who were fighting over who got to be patron spirit of a dried-up fountain in Avatar Korra Park. Spirits happened to have much longer lifespans, sure, but spirits and humans were brethren in this world.

If you needed any more proof of that, well, spirits could die, just like humans. That fact hung right above him in the blurry, white face of the moon. A hundred years ago, it had been a different moon sailing in that sky — the spirit of Tui. It was the spirit of Yue watching over him now, and what a sight he must've been. A splayed heap fading away in a dark corner of Republic City. She wouldn't have the answers to his questions either. Tui would. Tui was dead.

No human or spirit alive had the answers. So who did?

Mako's mind wandered. It wandered into places he would never have gone if he'd been anywhere else but death's door. Who had the answers? Well, people had their beliefs.

Beings greater than the spirits: gods. Or singular. Capital g. God.

Mako wasn't about to go too deep into that. He might be on his deathbed but if he was about to be thrown into hell he might as well not torture himself in his last few minutes of peace by pondering over the existence of an ultimate maker.

He didn't know much about God, or gods. He'd never sat down in prayer, never attended a service, never gave the holy buildings of Republic City much more than a passing glance. It was too much to think about, too foreign an idea.

An omniscient being watching his every move? He didn't know if the idea was comforting or offensive. Comforting, because it meant that his life was in the hands of someone much more competent than himself, and offensive because it meant someone just sat back and watched while he suffered and starved all those years ago. Sure, everything turned out okay in the end, but he didn't know if he was ready to chalk that up to some sort of divine plan.

But, he wouldn't go too deep into that. Dying. That was all he was trying to figure out.

The idea of God, or gods, usually went hand-in-hand with the idea of an afterlife. Not a new life, like rebirth, but the beginning of a _true _life in some other plane of existence, beyond the spirit and physical world. He wasn't sure how it worked exactly — just heaven, hell, and sometimes a limbo in between.

He got why people wanted to believe in it. It promised justice. The cop part of his brain loved the idea — the cynic part of him doubted it. But in any case, probably the most inviting part of the idea was if there was a final resting place, you could be with the ones you lost again.

Mako stopped imagining that he would ever see his parents again a long time ago. Honestly, back in the days when he was working with the triads, he never wanted to face them again. It was easier to steal and scam and lie when he didn't have to imagine his dead parents hovering over his shoulder, tutting at his crimes. Now, well, he didn't know how he felt.

He lost them so long ago and spent so long actively trying to forget them that it felt like he barely knew them, and they barely knew him. They were only there for those first eight cloudy years of his life. It was always just better, easier, to cram his fleeting memories of them into the back of his mind. For all intents and purposes, his parents were dead, they always were, and they always would be. There was never any point in thinking otherwise.

If there _was _an afterlife, that turned everything on its head. It meant that they were out there somewhere, and they'd been watching over him ever since. A tiny, seedling of a thought planted itself in his dumb, deoxygenated brain — that maybe, just maybe, he could see his parents again.

Somehow, he was bleeding out in a dark alley that smelled of rotting fish and he managed to feel _hopeful. _Apparently some repressed child part of this brain still wanted to see his mommy and daddy again. And do what? Ask how many brownie points he got for keeping Bolin alive? Rub his shiny, new police badge in their faces and ask them if they were proud? Spirits (or God, or gods) he was delirious.

He shouldn't be thinking like that. As much as he might want to see his parents again, that all hung on a lot of assumptions — like if there was a fucking afterlife at all. And that his parents went to heaven or whatever they had on the other side, and that whoever was up there decided that he could go and join them. There was always the chance that he'd be rubbing shoulders with Ming-Hua and Amon in eternal damnation, which he'd really rather not.

Of course, the answer to all those questions was: Who knows? Mako, frankly, didn't know shit and there was nothing he could do to change that. All of this speculation on heaven, hell, reincarnation, spirits, God, gods — it was all completely and utterly pointless. He knew as much about death as he did at the beginning of all this, meaning he was still completely in the dark and choking on terror. Maybe even worse off now because now when he thought of dying, all he could think of were his parents. A flash of screaming red. A skin-melting, flesh-cooking, blood-boiling, flash.

So now he was in the dark, choking on terror _and_ sulky. He'd die as he lived, at least.

It was ironic, really. Every time he'd seen death in his life, it'd been fast — a burst of fire, a lightning bolt to the heart. And here he was dancing circles around his head for the last… hour? Two? Enough time to needlessly introspect, that's for sure. A grand irony, all of it.

And he was what? A few blocks from where his parents died? In a rotting alleyway in the pitch of night, sharing their deathbed of stained, Republic City asphalt and a blanket of biting cold air. Everything was coming full circle. He always thought he should've died with them that night.

You'd think having seen death so young he'd be better equipped to face it now. As everything above could tell you, he wasn't. Death was no old friend. Death was a foreign specter that Mako was never properly introduced to. They first met when his parents were killed and Mako never had any idea how to approach. Not now and definetely not then.

He remembered his parents getting buried. Their graves were simple, with matching headstones, and the funeral had no ministers or prayers or fancy rituals — just two boys and a social worker, standing in the morning fog. Whether that was what his parents wanted, he didn't know. They'd never been very religious, not in front of him, at least. He remembered a little golden incense burner, probably the nicest thing they owned, that his mom hovered over every now and then, but never his dad. Maybe they'd had different religions. Seeing as they were born oceans apart, it'd be a surprise if they didn't.

The graves gave him a place to visit, at the very least: ten across from the left side of the Republic City Cemetery, ninth-ish row from the back — 'ninth-ish' because the rows of headstones in the grounds were jagged and branched off at random. Mako never had the money to buy the plots next to them before they were filled, so there was no chance that he'd be buried beside them. If they buried him at all. He was about as religiously ambiguous as his parents.

He visited them, but he was never really sure what to do when he did. Everyone else seemed to know how to reach the dead. How to mourn. He'd often passed the graveyard to see families pouring boiling water or scattering carnation petals across the mounds. The airbenders had traditions set to incense smoke and the chime of bells. Asami arranged her parents' memorials with platters of food and bowls of fresh fruit, all set before braziers that burned aromatic wood. He and Korra once walked past the cemetery in the Southern Water Tribe, where trinkets and relics jutted from the ice — the belongings of those who had passed.

Mako and Bolin honored their parents in the only way they knew how. Mako would dust off the stones and weed out the dirt, and Bolin would lay down some flowers he found growing in the graveyard — usually a mix of daisies, wilting poppies and half-blown dandelions. Surrounded by marble steles, tables decked with homemade offerings and graves adorned with bouquets of fresh flowers, he always wondered if he was doing it wrong. He still did.

He didn't know why his parents never told him and Bolin what they believed in. Maybe they'd kept it away from them so they could choose on their own one day. Not that the day ever came. It might've helped to know, to have something as solid as a text or even a belief to guide him through those early days when he found himself suddenly, violently alone with a baby brother who needed looking after. He'd been eight, for crying out loud. His morals were half-baked and his world had just fallen apart. He never learned how to mourn. How to pray. How to live. How to die.

But life went on regardless. He just had to stumble forward, stitching a code of ethics from the moral gray of Republic City's streets and the few lessons his parent's had the chance to teach him before they were gone. What he got was a patchwork of barely functional but hard-wrought moral tenets.

Rule #1: Take care of Bolin. That was hammered into his mind from practically the moment his brother was born. It also happened to be the last thing his parents told him to do. His mom told him _take care of Bolin_ and his dad yelled _run_. He hadn't planned on letting either of them down. Everything he'd done for the longest time, from the streets to the triads to probending, had been for Bolin. All roads lead to his brother, and making sure he was happy and safe and not starving in a ditch. Or dying in an alley like Mako was.

Sure, there was nothing much to take care of these days. Bolin was an adult and he could take care of himself, but Mako never outgrew the need to protect. Asami once told him he had the instincts of a mama turtleduck. She said he'd have to get used to an empty nest. She was probably right. Except, he never really got used to the emptiness, and decided somewhere along the line that his nest would never be empty.

Bolin became something of a metaphor, really. Bolin was someone he loved, cared for, and protected, and somewhere along the way more people fell under that definition. It was Korra, and Asami, and Wu, and Opal, and the airbender kids, and the entire goddamn city. As long as he had the power to help them, he would.

So yeah. Rule #1: Take care of 'Bolin'.

Another rule: don't let them get to you. Firebenders were known for their equally fiery tempers, and Mako was no different when he was younger. Plenty of things flared him up. Kids were ruthless, they made fun of each other for just about anything — his family, his wealth, or his lack thereof. Even little things riled him, like his baby brother crying for the dozenth time in one day. His hands would flare, sparks would fly and Bolin would cry even louder. A little part of him liked the fire. It came to him so easily — power, so readily at his fingertips. His mom didn't think the same.

Power was easy, she told him. Control — now that was the important part.

Little Mako took that to heart. His mom was the best firebender he knew — if he wanted to be as good as her, he needed control, control, control. Don't let little things bother you, take a deep breath before you get angry, step back before things flare up. Then his mom was gone, and he _needed _to be as good as her — he needed to be _better_ — so he needed control, control, control. Never let it get to you. Never let it show. Not the hunger, not the fear, not the grief.

What started as simply listening to his mom's advice became an ingrained part of his being — that cool under fire style and blank demeanor. He might've gone a little too far with it. He came off as an asshole a lot. It made him a natural at lightning bending though, and it kept him from bursting into tears as he died. Everytime that paralyzing fear started to creep into his brain… control, control, control.

There were lessons he hadn't kept, too. Like don't mess with the triads. Keep away, don't make eye contact, don't give them your time of day. He'd been too young to understand why, but he still remembered his dad pointing out the greasy looking men on the other side of the road, with their silk suits and gold chains.

He broke that promise, of course. But he'd had to. As much as he hated doing it and as happy as he was to end that part of his life, he couldn't say he made the wrong choice. He'd beat back the triads now to make up for it, but he'd do it all again if he had to. It was a necessary evil. Times were tough. Rule #1 was of higher precedence.

He added his newest tenet a few years back and he tried as hard as he could to follow it: Do as Korra would do. Be selfless, be kind, be brave. Sacrifice life and limb for those you love. Throw yourself on the line to destroy a giant colossus. The rule honestly made any other tenets of his redundant.

He'd have to thank Korra for that, if he had the chance. He probably wouldn't.

A cough wrenched its way out of his chest so tortuously it might've taken some of his soul out with it. It clawed his throat, it blanked his vision, it seized his lungs. Suddenly, every breath in felt short of every breath out — like his life was leaking away and he couldn't get the air to replace it. Everything his body did seemed hectic, desperate, and not enough. Like he was drowning.

Dying. He was dying. And he still didn't know what was next.

A burst of adrenaline shot through his veins again, begging him to stay alive. He was inclined to try, but the logical part of his brain, the one that had been stewing all night long, took control from the struggling, animal part of him. Because really, what was the point? He didn't need more time. He'd had a lifetime to try and figure things out but didn't. He'd had the entire night to contemplate and the only conclusion he came to was that he missed his parents, he'd lived a decent life, and death was an enigma. All time would do now was make the night that much more painful.

Mako laid down his arms. His mental arms. Waved an internal white flag in his brain and for the first time that entire night, his body listened. The adrenaline ebbed away, leaving his veins hollow and cold. His limbs were numb, his breathing laboured, and his heart faint. He was done, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and soon, physically. This was the end. And he'd go out quietly. After a life of fighting and struggle, that was perhaps the greatest irony.

A shadow fell over him — a specter against the streetlight. This really was it then. This must be a gatekeeper to death, someone who guided souls to the afterlife, or to be reincarnated, or whatever.

What did people usually think about in their last moments? Regrets, goodbyes, prayers. Regrets — he had a lot of them, best not to get into that. Goodbyes — everyone, he'd miss them all, and if he gave that any more thought he'd probably backtrack on not wanting more time. Prayers — well, he'd just have to pick a god and place his bets. Honestly, he wasn't too confident about standing to be judged by any god. Reincarnation then? Yeah, that sounded alright. Pray for an easy life in a town quieter than this one, or hope his new life played some part in his friends' lives. Or just make him a plant, he wouldn't complain.

The specter stepped closer. Death kinda looked like Chief Beifong. That made sense.

His delirious self looked up at Death and slurred, "I wanna be a plant."

"Excuse me?" Death sounded like the chief as well, down to the annoyed lilt of her voice.

He repeated. "I wanna be reincarnated into a plant."

It gave him a look. Maybe asking Death for favors was a bit of an overstep. "You're not getting reincarnated."

"Oh." That was disappointing. He'd really been hoping for that one. "I hope God is nice then."

Its frown deepened. "You're not meeting them today."

"Oh." No reincarnation, no ultimate maker. Where the hell was Death taking him? Mako tilted his head back and stared at the night sky. He whispered, "Am I gonna be a star?"

"Kid, shut the fuck up."

Now that shook the haze out of his eyes. When the world was somewhat clearer, Mako found a very real Chief Beifong crouched beside him with a very real scowl on her face. He must've still been a little out of it though, because the chief looked paler than normal, as if the blood had drained from her skin. It was what the chief might've looked like if she were scared.

"Dumbass skins his knee and thinks he's dying. I thought your brother was the one for dramatics. I called the paramedics. Can you get up?" Mako just blinked at her. "Nevermind, probably better if you don't. I guess we wait."

She sat against the wall beside him. Mako stared up at the sky again. He probably shouldn't have trusted himself with talking after all the nonsense he'd spewed earlier, but he'd already half-forgotten what he'd said and after the night he'd had, Mako couldn't stand the silence.

"What happens when we die?"

"You're not dying."

"But what if I did?"

The chief was quiet for a long time. Mako resigned himself to die alongside the conversation. When she did talk again, her voice was quiet and echoey in his ears.

"My mother used to say that when we die, our bodies break down but our souls don't go anywhere. She said that we can still hear and think and feel everything that happens to us after we die, even when they bury us in the dirt and the worms eat our flesh. She said that we're trapped in our bodies forever." The chief let that hang in the air for a moment. "I think she was just trying to scare us."

"Yeah," he squeaked. "Yeah, I think she was."

"You alright, kid?"

"Just fine. Can you tell the paramedics to hurry, please?"


End file.
